Friday Five: Aug 12, 2016

1. The History of the National Parks Service Posters

The AIGA celebrates the 100th birthday of the National Parks by digging into the (sometimes lost) history of the iconic posters produced for them. Between posters for every park, tourism posters of the “See America” campaign, and other one offs like the one above, the breadth of work and old school design talent (that lettering!), a good source of visual inspiration whether you’re a designer or not.

2. Is America Any Safer?

The latest issue of The Atlantic investigates, fifteen years after the 9/11 attacks, is America actually safer than it used to be? With the security theatre of the TSA, billions (if not trillions) invested in security technologies and programs, and the bureaucratic mess of the Department of Homeland Security, what has actually successfully made America any safer? Sure, we’ve reenforced the doors on airplanes, and apparently also given a lot of commercial pilots guns, so that a 9/11 style hijacking is highly unlikely to occur again, but what has the done to curb radical violence and intended terror attacks in the US? It’s a long read, but the outlook is not too great.

3. The Great Affluence Fallacy

Can money buy privacy? Is privacy what we really actually want? This short essay from David Brooks discusses what he calls the “Great Affluence Fallacy” which he defines as such:

… we want privacy in individual instances, but often this makes life generally worse.

4. Fuck ’Em If They Can’t Take A Joke

Lindsay Zoladz for The Ringer asks: can millennials take a joke? In the era of “PC Culture”, trigger warnings, and internet humor, can “offensive comedy” survive? There’s no way the level of Lenny Bruce deliberate shock and offensiveness would pass a college comedy circuit today. On the flip side, people are quick to make jokes about dead gorillas on the internet, so maybe the definition of “offensive comedy” has shifted. While there is a line between offensiveness and hate speech, there is also a large degree of over sensitivity that ends up with performers, speakers, and celebrities being banned from campuses around the country over a tweet or a comment they made, the student body quick to shame and mar them for simple expression. If you don’t want to read the whole essay, at least read the last section, which asks the following:

If comedy is all about boldly confronting taboos, what could be more taboo than giving voice to those who have so often been shut out of conversations?

5. How To Make Airplanes Stop Crashing Into Mountains

Bloomberg talks to Don Bateman, the man that invented the system that tells pilots how to not crash into stuff.